Diwali crackers and Otaku-ness

Its Diwali time once again in India, and everyone is busy buying sweets and crackers (thats what we call fireworks here, not something that polly would want). Its India’s festival of lights where people of all ages have fun blasting crackers the whole night. Little kids with sparklers and plastic guns that blast “tickli”s , big kids with atom/hydrogen/lakshmi bombs, and then everyone else with their flower pots and rockets.

It is indeed a sight worth watching where everyone tries to show off their purchases by blasting at the right moment. Its not like a special location is fixed where you can blast them. Anyone and everyone blasts them on their colony roads, in their house’s plot etc.. the community handles the aftermath (cleaning roads etc)

*The Point

Now what does all this have anything to do with the topics that we at WEastGamers deal with? well, the special thing about Indian crackers is that there are many companies/small households making these things and the best way to sell their wares is by having the most attractive covers for the boxes they sell them in.

They usually have things that kids (cartoons) and adults (famous actresses) would notice the most. Not too many years ago, I started seeing things like Mario and Sonic popup in these box covers. I immediately wanted to have a look these boxes, and then understood how effective this idea is. However, the first thing I got in my head was “copyrights!” but seeing that this is India and no one cares for such small things.(not like they are earning billion dollars and they don’t have an “official” presence here either) Its freely done.

*The Reason

Recently I saw a post @ Kotaku showing “devil may cry fireworks” People went “Wow” by looking at it.. seeing that how everyone was surprised at the thing, I commented there saying this:

Wow, guys, if you find that amusing, wait for “Diwali” to start here, there are so many cracker boxes with Mario, Peach, Sonic and many other game characters that are sold here since years!

Cool, so I will take pics and send them this diwali!

So, yeah I am man of my words, today was diwali crackers shopping time for me and I took pictures of all those boxes with references that I thought you all can relate to.

These are the ones I could find, but I am sure there are many more somewhere out there. I leave them here, for your viewing pleasure, to make it more interesting, why not try and name all the characters that you see here in the images.

Will try to take videos and more pictures of things this diwali. Keep looking for updates But yeah one thing is for sure.. people found it very amusing, seeing me take pictures of these things As for myself it felt kinda different but nice!